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switching by office holders after the election; intense cross-institutional conflicts (as in
impeachments by the legislature and excessive decree use by the executive); deadlock
periods in which a government cannot form or a budget cannot be passed. Again, these
conditions call for close scrutiny for subversions, although any of them can coexist with
democratic responsiveness in the right context.
Policymaking. At the policymaking stage one obvious subversion of responsiveness
is the “bait and switch” tactic, where a candidate campaigns under one set of promises
and then claims that new information or conditions make it necessary to reverse course
on these. As noted, this can happen legitimately and voters can judge if has been justified
in their review at the next election. But the easy justifications that policymakers can find
for not keeping their promises can also be mere cover for abandoning citizen preferences
and pursuing their own interests. A closely related and very wide-spread subversion is
corrupt behavior, either on the part of the top policymakers or throughout lower levels of
the bureaucracy. The promised program of building roads or improving health care can
easily be immobilized by corruption in implementation. A similar but perhaps more
ambiguous phenomenon is that of excessive special-interest influence or lobbying.
Officeholders who do things for lobbies are in a sense being “responsive,” of course, but
rent-seeking and other instances of special interests gone too far are widely decried
problems in more than a few working democracies
Constraints imposed by the policymaking setting may undermine the ability of the
policymakers to deliver even if they wish to do so. Domestically, inadequately
developed bureaucratic and security organizations may create serious limitations. Sudden
shifts in international economic conditions or pressures from external actors, such as
other nations or international institutions, may also force changes in promised policies or
result in outcomes different than those sought.
Despite occasionally legitimate justifications, I think that failing to keep promises is a
red flag for policymaker subversion. So is a high level of corruption in the bureaucracy,
as discerned by external monitors and domestic observers. Direct policy outcomes that
fail to achieve policies that citizens desire are harder to assess, but comparison with
selected nations in similar economic circumstances may provide warning benchmarks.
Conditions That Facilitate Each Linkage
Generally speaking, the other dimensions of democratic quality—freedom, equality,
vertical and horizontal accountability, and the rule of law—are also qualities that
facilitate democratic responsiveness. However, there are additional conditions at each
linkage that may facilitate a responsive connection. There are briefly indicated in the
bottom half of Table 1.
An active and independent mass media, educated citizens, and parties wedded to
national-scale discourse promote an informed public whose preferences are sufficiently
coherent to make responsiveness meaningful. We don’t know much about how such a
national party discourse emerges, but party competition and media independence are no
Convention